“Like we’ve been?”
“No. I want to end the division of your space and my space, and make it all our space. Our home. I want to end the division of our time, too. I want you doing family things with us.” Gavin ran his hand down her arm and threaded his fingers through hers. “This isn’t a fling for me. It hasn’t been from the start. I love you, Ree. I want to spend my life with you. Every part of it.”
“You’re not just saying that in the wake of smoking-hot sex?”
He frowned. “Can you be serious—”
She smothered his protest with a laughing kiss. “You accuse me of being too serious.” She propped her chin on his chest. “The honest truth? I don’t want to build that house. I want to live here with you. I adore Sierra and I know she’s part of the package. That said, I’ve always been so independent and in a short amount of time I find myself depending on you more and more. What if…”
“What if I leave, and you’ve come to depend on me and I’m no longer there? Honey. That’s not going to happen.”
“I know you love me. You know I love you. But things can change so fast.”
“Not this.” He kissed her knuckles. “Years down the road, I want to look at you and remind you of this moment and do a little I-told-you-so dance.”
She laughed softly. “Now, that is something I can’t wait to see. Do we tell Sierra about the change?”
“I like that you said we.” He liked it a lot. “I don’t know that it requires a sit-down discussion. The melding of our lives has been a gradual shift over the last few months, and she’s accepted those changes. If she asks, then we’ll address it.”
“All right.”
“There is one thing I want to do to prove that I’m serious about permanently tying our lives together.”
“What?”
“Putting your name on the title to this house. Before you automatically say, no, no way, I’m not taking that gift from you, I’ll point out it’s not a gift. You’ll have to pay half the property taxes. And I’ll want you to start kicking in more money for utilities because those ovens of yours are a serious electrical suck.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Shit. Ree, honey, I was kidding about the utilities.”
“I know that, dumbass.” She sniffled. “It’s just more than I ever expected. You…this…everything.”
God, he loved this woman.
“For me too.”
April…
“Boone. Check this out.”
Sierra aligned photocopies from the Crook County Monitor newspaper on the coffee table.
“What did you find?”
“This newspaper went out of business in the early decade of the nineteen hundreds but here’s mention of a land transfer from Ezekiel West to Silas McKay in 1898.” She squinted at the blurred text. “I can’t tell how much land, but I bet that’s the land the McKays supposedly ‘stole’ from the Wests.”
“Huh. Did it say anything in Dinah McKay’s journal about it?”
“Not that I’ve come across, but she detailed just about everything else, so I’ll look closer. Although, she didn’t start chronicling her life as a ranch wife until she married Jonas McKay in 1901.”
“Wait. Who is Silas McKay?”
“Jonas’s twin brother. And you’re not the only one who hasn’t heard of him.” Sierra slumped back into the couch, her eyes aching from trying to read old, faded text.
“Something wrong?” Boone asked, concern on his face. “Where does it hurt?”
“Just a twinge. I’m fine.” Boone constantly fussed over her, but she liked it so sometimes she let him soothe her pains—phantom or not. After her car accident and all the hours he’d helped her with homework and her research project, they’d become even better friends. She liked him, liked spending time with him. They both had an offbeat way of looking at things and they shared the same strange sense of humor. If friends were all they ever were, she was good with that. But she’d be lying if she didn’t admit part of her would always hope for more.
“Earth to Sierra.”
“Sorry. What was I saying?”
“Something about Jonas and Silas McKay.”
“Right. How can the McKays be so proud of their family name and lineage and not know their basic history? I talked to my Aunt Kimi—”
“Our Aunt Kimi,” he corrected with a quick smile.
She stuck her tongue out at him as she always did when he reminded her of their shared family connection. “Our Aunt Kimi told me in the years she knew Jed McKay, he refused to speak of his father’s twin brother. He said they’d paid good money to ensure the past was left buried in the past.”
“Cryptic. Did Kimi ever ask her father about it?”
“I guess he expressed his displeasure that two of his daughters married into a family of thieves and murderers.” Sierra absentmindedly tapped her pen. “Kimi said not even the gossip about her and Carolyn marrying into the McKay family revived the old scandal, whatever it might’ve been. How can it be such a big secret?”
He wore a reflective look. “The Wests and the McKays have been settled in Crook and Weston counties longer than any other existing families. With coal mining, railroads, oil production and agriculture, people constantly moving in and out of the area, not only in the last fifty years, but the last hundred years…things that happened, even scandalous things, would get lost in the shuffle, Sierra.”
“I get that. Our families have forgotten the actual event that caused the feud in the first place, but they’ve kept the hatred for generations? I don’t buy that. There’s a cover up on one side or both sides.”
“I agree.” Boone pushed his hair out of his face. “I can’t believe that neither Aunt Kimi nor Aunt Caro knows the West family history besides that all the Wests have always hated all the McKays and always will. Caro and Kimi are the most gossipy, in-the-know women in the area.”
“Exactly what I said! So I’ll admit I was a little…pushy with Kimi, especially since Jed McKay lived with her and Uncle Cal and I think she was dodging my questions. But I’m interested in the real story, dammit.”
“Maybe you oughta be a reporter. Or a private eye.” Boone nudged her. “So how did Aunt Kimi react to a pushy non-McKay acting like a pushy McKay?”